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Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple

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Character and characteristic men

This book delves into the distinctive characteristics and personalities of various prominent figures, offering insights into what makes them stand out among others. more

Author

Edwin Percy Whipple

Edwin Percy Whipple was an American essayist known for his significant contributions to 19th-century American literature. Born on March 8, 1819, in Boston, Massachusetts, Whipple passed away on June 16, 1886. His essays, which often delved into themes of morality and social issues, established him as a prominent figure in the literary world. more

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“The eye observes only what the mind, the heart, and the imagination are gifted to see; and sight must be reinforced by insight before souls can be discerned as well as manners, ideas as well as objects, realities and relations as well as appearances and accidental connections.”

“Heroism is no extempore work of transient impulse--a rocket rushing fretfully up to disturb the darkness by which, after a moment's insulting radiance, it is ruthlessly swallowed up,--but a steady fire, which darts forth tongues of flame. It is no sparkling epigram of action, but a luminous epic of character.”

“A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. You cannot, by tying an opinion, to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing.”

“The great characteristic of men of active genius is a sublime self-confidence, springing not from self-conceit, but from an intense identification of the man with his object, which lifts him altogether above the fear of danger and death, which gives to his enterprise a character of insanity to the common eye, and which communicates an almost superhuman audacity to his will.”